weeyin

Summer football is an easy fix if you don't look at the leagues that tried it. They didn't increase attendances. So, if that is the aim, there isn't anything to suggest it would work. Pre-season would be fun too given it would be happening around now. If we struggle to find facilities to keep players ticking over Jan/Feb imagine how difficult it would be to get a full preseason in during the height of winter. Unless your team makes it into Europe, in which case you'd be playing in the winter too. And June is pretty much the only summer month without games, so we wouldn't be adding much to the schedule. Especially World Cup and Euro years when you need to shut down for 4 or 5 weeks. Winter break has always made more sense to me.

Islam Feruz - signed for Chelsea after coming through the Celtic youth system and currently on loan with Blackpool. Although he played at Scotland youth level too, rumour is he knocked back more recent call ups and possibly looking to play for a different nation at senior level.

Don't worry. He's still only as clueless as you thought he was yesterday.

It is going to be a dogfight, but if we can pick up 3 points in the next game, it might just make some of our rivals a bit more nervous.

I was lucky enough to watch the Skippy Sunday game on a Celtic TV stream. The commentary went from celebratory to concerned after Skippy's first goal. After the 2nd goal the commentary went dead for the rest of the broadcast. Good times.

Breakfast with the Dossers - ye can't beat it.

On the plus side, it prepared me for the heartbreak to come at a young age.

Graham and Pettigrew for me. When I was kid I thought Wullie P was just how strikers played. You often look back and realize nostalgia has made you overestimate the quality of some players, but I'm always happy to see that these guys still live up to their reputation. Graham only kept out of a great Liverpool team by Ian St. John (who was smart enough to bring him to Fir Park), and Wullie P with a burst of speed over 10 yards that left agricultural defenders (on agricultural pitches) in his wake.

One of these days someone will be able to explain to me what is so upsetting about a guy kissing the badge on the shirt of the team he is playing for. I still don't get it. I remember the fairly in depth interview Skippy gave on Radio Scotland (I think it was Tam's show) a few years ago, and he had nothing but good words to say about Motherwell and how much he enjoyed his time at Fir Park.

I'm old enough to know who that is (and his fish and chip diet).

Or, if you're Paul Quinn, make him captain.

Can he? Yes. Do you think a top class 19 year old 400m runner eats chips? Unlikely. It's not the fact that chips will do any harm per se. It's just the mentality of footballers in general compared to competitors in other athletic pursuits. The guys that make it to the very top are the ones that are always looking for an edge.

Given that he had 277 senior appearances to his name before he joined us, he must have some basic skills. Not to say that he will perform for us, of course. If even 4 of the new signings hit any level of performance this season that will be a pretty high % success rate for any team's transfers (epsecially January signings when the market is a lot thinner).

Kudos for being able to go on holiday.

Not directly, but they certainly aren't peers.

Of course we're getting the MFC Official version, but if getting interviewed by your boss about your poor performance doesn't make you modify your answers in some way you must be an idiot or a sociopath; especially when you are a new employee and don't have a track record to fall back on.

He talks the same shite because his boss's questions are framed to elicit exactly that kind of response. And he obliges because he wants to please his boss. That's where the conflict of interest kicks in.

I just can't see how sacking the manager and waiting another 4 weeks to hire a new guy who then takes 2 or 3 weeks to settle in is going to help us climb the table. Bottom line still is the players need to player better. As I said in another thread, it's simple - but not easy. I never understood why people on here thought Hughes was useless. I guess they were basing it on the way he speaks rather than his track record. Tough game and would be delighted with a point here.

Football is a doddle compared to most jobs. Especially at our level. If you can't hack picking up 2 or 3 grand a week for 5 half days of training and 90 minutes at the weekend, then step aside and let someone else have a chance. Maybe it's just me, but being booed by 2000 fans would be much less upsetting to me than getting bollocked by one of my clients. Because I know how fickle fan are.

I get that it's not easy. It's simple, but it's not easy. Leagues across the world are full of teams who battle with this problem every season and it's hardly alien to Fir Park either. I do still think, however, certain players became complacent, and once you fall behind, losing is a difficult habit to break.

That is one of the embarrassments of the Scottish game. Unfortunately, when more progressive managers have tried to educate players there is an inevitable rebellion. John Collins is the one that always spring to mind, but there are plenty of examples. It still amazes me that anyone who gets a chance to play a game for a living wouldn't want to take care of themselves for a few years to get the most out of it.

Agree with that. Even if we just hired a local media student for a couple of hours each week to conduct the interviews, it would better. Conflict of interest, especially when times are bad, is glaring and uncomfortable.

I get that, but the problem is the only way we know how any given manager would have performed with these players under these circumstances is if we hired them. And for all the Butcher advocates out there, his record in Scotland is 100% with teams fighting relegation. Inverness, Hibs and Motherwell all go down (except we were saved by the rules). I have seen plenty of bad teams at Fir Park, and seen plenty of relegation issues. Any time we have managed to avoid it it's been 100% down to the players taking care of business. If it was as easy as changing the manager, then nobody would ever go down. The fact that the same players are turning out the same crap under McCall, then Black and now Baraclough shows the common denominator. And I'm still sure a lot of those guys, consciously or unconsciously, truly believed that this season was going to be a doddle because of our record in the past couple.

It's the players that should be taking the blame. They strolled out the traps at the start of the season thinking they were still best of the rest, and haven't put in a 90 minute shift since.

The players let McCall down and now they are letting Baraclough down. Most importantly, they are letting us down. If you want to pick up wage for what is one of the easiest jobs in the world, apply yourself to the basics.